Dropbox flips Snapjoy album shut

Heavy Snapjoy users will be watching any download limits they might have, with Dropbox changing its mind and shuttering the cloudy pic-storing app.

Snapjoy, the self-described “smart photo library in the cloud”, allowed its users to aggregate their photos stored on other services including Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and Twitter, organising and viewing them from a single hub.

When it originally made the buy-the-talent acquisition in December 2012, Dropbox had promised to keep the site open, although it stopped accepting new sign-ons. It's not clear whether there's something wrong with the product, or Dropbox's bean-counters lowered the boom, but users have until July 24 to rescue their pics.

After that, the content will be deleted, Snapjoy announced in this thank-you-and-goodbye blog post. Perhaps ironically, the post is still accompanied by the puff-line that “With Snapjoy, all of your photos are always organized, safe, and together in one place.”

Users and commentators had expected that the photo aggregator would become the basis of a Dropbox-hosted photo sharing service. That still might happen, but any hope that their users would smoothly migrate from Snapjoy to a new, shiny Dropbox service has now been dashed.

With its user base fled, Dropbox has probably spotted some other bauble that's more exciting. ®